AIRS L3 Daily: Global Atmospheric Retrievals on a 1-Degree Grid

Aqua/AIRS Level 3 Daily Standard Physical Retrieval provides global daily gridded means, standard deviations, and counts for atmospheric thermodynamic parameters. Data is binned into 1x1 degree latitude/longitude cells from the AIRS grating spectrometer aboard NASA's EOS Aqua satellite, covering both ascending and descending orbits. The product uses a specific gridding scheme centered on the dateline to maintain temporal coincidence within grid cells.

Use Cases

• Analyzing daily global skin temperature patterns based on the gridded mean values.
• Studying atmospheric temperature profile variability using the provided standard deviation maps.
• Creating custom multi-day composite maps by aggregating daily data using the per-bin count maps.
• Validating climate models with spatially and temporally coincident satellite retrieval data.

Strengths

• Provides standard deviation and sample count maps alongside mean values for each parameter, enabling uncertainty assessment.
• Uses a consistent 1x1 degree global grid, facilitating spatial analysis and comparison with other datasets.
• Data is structured to ensure points within a grid box are temporally coincident, improving accuracy for time-series analysis.

Limitations

• Metadata completeness is low: column names, row counts, and file sizes are unspecified across all sources.
• Daily products have data gaps (gores) between satellite paths where there is no coverage for that day.
• License information is conflicting or unclear ('other-license-specified' vs. 'None').

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing via the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) grating spectrometer aboard the EOS Aqua platform.

Freshness

2026-03-13 17:49:56.067202

Geography

Global coverage from -180.0 to +180.0 degrees longitude and -90.0 to +90.0 degrees latitude.